Requiem for the Knight of Paris

December 31, 2019

On December 30th, the most famous street character of the Cuban capital would have turned 120 years old: José López Lledín, the well-known Knight of Paris.

He came into the world in a modest home on that second-to-last day of 1899, in Vilaseca, a municipality of Fonsagrada, in Lugo, one of the four Spanish provinces of Galicia, and arrived in Cuba before turning 15 years old, where some of his relatives then resided.

Being a simple employee of a Havana service establishment, a large monetary shortage was detected there, he was blamed for it, fell prisoner in a cell, and the suffering was enough to damage his mental health overnight—without being defended as he deserved—. He was not exonerated of the accusation nor could he maintain his moral and psychological balance nor the reputation necessary to find new employment.

Thus, the noble and honorable Joseíto the Galician became one of the poor and helpless street wanderers of Havana, and eventually the doctors who agreed to treat him diagnosed him with Paraphrenia, characterized by a strong delusion of grandeur.

Because of this behavior, his French-style clothing, and the stories he frequently told as real experiences, the people themselves affectionately and respectfully called him "the Knight of Paris."

This way of describing him and at the same time of differentiating him from the unfortunate beggars of the era before 1959 who were seen throughout the different neighborhoods of the capital asking for alms—something he never did—initiated his indelible fame.

The most imaginative Knight who wandered through the streets of Havana was a successful emulator of other Cuban characters remembered in different times and provinces, such as Joseíto the Fool, Seboruco, Enriquito the Machinist (all from Matanzas), as well as La China, Bigote-Gato, Charles, and many others.

The unfortunate son of Galicia came to believe for 40 years, with the utmost naturalness, that he was Emperor of Peace, an avid reader of the French newspaper Le Monde, collaborator of Hirohito of Japan, Inhabitant of the Earthly Paradise (referring to the Mazorra Hospital for the Mentally Ill where he was confined several times) and intimate friend of the renowned King Alfonso XIII, whom he would evoke at times as "my companion in adventures and hunts, the two of us together."

The Knight of Paris died on July 12, 1965 at the aforementioned Havana Psychiatric Hospital that today bears the honorable name of Comandante Bernabé Ordaz.

Currently, by initiative of Doctor Eusebio Leal Spengler, Historian of Havana, the bronze statue of the Knight, his mortal remains, and his reputation as an unrepeatable picturesque wanderer are preserved as symbols, not only of an admirable mentally ill person, but also as the image of the hope and nobility of the vast majority of Cubans, and a source of admiration for all travelers (from home or from other parts of the world) who traverse the Historic Center of our capital.